Russian America

“ All over the world, the question to-day is, Who has a right to construct and administer law? Russia—gelid, frigid Russia—can not escape the question. Yea, he that sits on the Russian throne has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of God, and of its partner emotion, love to man, in emancipating thirty million serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given. ”

“ As things stand at present, it is principally toward Great Britain and America that Russia must look for its salvation. What I am writing to-day has been my earnest and deep conviction for long years, and I have preached it not only since the beginning of this war in all the books and articles which I have written, but also long before any one ever thought or suspected that the day would come when the English Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes would float beside the Russian flag and the French Tricolor on the same battlefields, united against one common enemy. ”

“ The Russian peasants, who for so many centuries have struggled and sacrificed themselves to possess the land, are strangely lacking in national pride, as we know it. They are not envious of other countries. They could not conceive of an aggressive policy. If you say to them that America is far richer and more progressive than Russia, they will tell you they are very glad to hear it and are glad you are happy. They ask of the foreigner only to be let alone and not to send any more White generals against them; they ask to be allowed to [Pg 108] develop their own political institutions. ”

“ The Russians are a peculiarly hospitable people. Their attitude of mind is charitable, and even in commercial America they retain much of the spirit that distinguishes them in Europe. I met a queer old Russian tramp in Eastern Pennsylvania ”

“ America, faithful to its traditions of welcoming liberty in all lands, was the first Power to recognize officially the new Russian regime. Among the Bohemians in America the delight over the upheaval in Russia was unbounded. ”

“ Naturally, an American has great sympathy for [Pg 157] the Russian people who have so little, while he has so much. In America we send our girls and boys to school as a matter of course. Here in the ornate center of autocracy, I have seen no building that I recognized as a common school, nor in Russia is there such a system, as we know it. ”

“ They will not soon forget that the United States was the first great power to recognize the new government and to hail the revolution. The American ambassador, David R. Francis, is easily the most popular diplomat in Petrograd. Every one knows him, and he rarely appeared in a meeting or convention without being applauded. Over and over again, during my three months’ visit to Russia, I was told that it was to America they looked for help and guidance, and after the war they want to enter into the closest commercial relations with us. ”

“ In America the man who is tramping the road and will not work is an object of enmity. He is almost a criminal. He is not wanted. He will receive little [Pg xv] hospitality, must chop wood for his breakfast or steal. His life is a blasphemy breathed against the American ideal. But in Russia none is looked upon more kindly than the man on the road, the tramp or the pilgrim. There are a million or so of them on the road in the summer. They are characteristic of Russia. In them the Russian confesses that he is a stranger and a pilgrim upon the earth. ”

“ But the need of help is urgent, and if the policy of promoting revolution elsewhere were to succeed, it would probably render the nations concerned temporarily incapable of supplying Russian needs. It is, therefore, necessary for Russia to accept the risks and uncertainties involved in attempting to make peace with the Entente and to trade with America. ”

“ It seems the Russian who comes to New York is at once grabbed by the existent Social-Democratic organisations, and though he go to church still, he begins to be more and more attached to [Pg 82] revolutionism. It is strange that these organisations are directed, not against the Tsar and the officialdom of Russia, but against the Government of the United States and the commercial machine. There is no question of America being a refuge for the persecuted Russian. The latter is assured at once that America is a place of even worse tyranny than the land he has come from. ”

“ He believed that in America we lack soul. We worship science and money and business. The Russian alone lives in intimacy with God and regards that relation of the supremest importance. “The American,” he continued, “believes in developing natural resources, the German develops the mind, the Russian alone develops the soul.”
I have always had the greatest reverence for the Russian Soul. I have learned something the Herr Director could not see, on account of the natural, political antagonism between his own country and Russia ”

“ Her first chapter, Awakening Russia, and her last, Russia of to-morrow deal with the revolution of 1917, the difficulty of bringing the Russian peasants to a realization of what democracy means, and what the provisional government really is. Other chapters deal with: The military party; Aristocratic women in Russian life and politics; German influence in Russia; America and Russia; Russian art, dramatic literature and music, etc. ”

“ In Russia, as in all the other great countries engaged in the conflict, with the probable exception of Austria, the war was popular and a wave of patriotic enthusiasm and martial ardor swept over the land, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from St. Petersburg to Siberia.
In Russia military service is universal and begins at the age of 20, continuing for twenty-three years. There are three divisions of the Russian army—the European, Caucasian and Asiatic armies. ”

“ The one represented by a despotism in which the people have no part, or the one represented by a system of government through which the will of the people freely acts. There can be but one result in such a conflict, one answer to such a question. The eternal purposes are writ too large in the past to mistake them. And it is the ardent hope of America that Russia—that Empire which has so generously accorded us her friendship in our times of peril—may not by cataclysm from within, but of her own volition, place herself fully in line with the ideals of an advanced civilization. ”

“ Russia is not dead yet. Russia shall show the world that, betrayed as she has been, she can still lift the yoke put upon her, save herself, and help to save the world for the great cause of Democracy. ”

“ Moving silently and irresistibly toward the East, and guided by a subtle and far-reaching policy, who can foresee what will be the end, and what the ultimate destiny of the Empire which had its beginning in a small Slavonic State upon the Dnieper, and which, until a little more than a century ago, was too much of a barbarian to be admitted into the fraternity of European States.
The farthest removed from us in political ideals, Russia has in the various crises in our national life always been America's truest friend. ”

“ Surely it is somewhat strange, that while Russia fills so large a space, not only on the map, but in the politics of the world—while the influence of her active mind, and of her powerful muscle, is felt and acknowledged in Europe, Asia, and America—that we, who come in contact with her diplomatic skill and her intelligence at every turn and in every quarter, should never have thought it worth while to take any note of her literature—of the more attractive movements of her mind. ”

“ The Russian nation, indeed, is not one of fools, but of potential geniuses. But the trend of their genius is not that of Western races. It lies in the arts and philosophy and rarely descends to the more sordid realms of politics and commerce.
Yet, in spite of a reputation for unpracticalness, the Russians have shown the world at least one supreme example of economic organization. It is forgotten nowadays that Russia deserves an equal share in the honours of the Great War. She bore the brunt of the first two years of it and made possible the long defence of the Western front. ”

“ Let us think of Russia with her bigness, her space, her consciousness of unity, and of the large thing, and remember we have all the possibilities of health and splendour that the Russians have if we will only face our problems and do the things which are obvious to all except to those who fight in the political arena for fighting’s sake.
To recapitulate:
(1) Russia has at least double the white population in her Empire that we have in ours. Why should we not take steps to transplant from over-crowded Britain to the less crowded parts of the Empire, and so get better families? ”

“ Russia, with all its vast resources and with its immense territory, would do well to imitate England and the United States in their immense work of culture and to call the latter countries to her help in developing her own national existence on proper and useful bases. ”

“ Every nationality in Russia has contributed to the intellectual wealth of the country, and it is in this blending of the whole country's thought that lies the glorious promise of a great Russia,—a promise that is bound to be fulfilled when the spirit of intellectual lethargy is conquered, and mystic Russia awakens from her slumber. ”

“ There is a fortune waiting for the capitalist who will take cold, soft drinks to Russia, and he will have besides the fortune the additional satisfaction of bringing hope to the sodden victims of vodka.
An army that will obey orders; a government that will govern; leaders in business, in transportation, in agriculture and a people willing to obey those leaders; education, wholesome life. Russia needs all these, and in her coming mighty struggle to achieve them the whole world of democracy, and especially our United States, must lend willing and sympathetic help and guidance. ”

“ That Russia will live which has already renounced passive submission to another will and to the past, which will go to the West, accept its great experience, its forms of life, and which will live attentively following its work, revering its active Aryan culture which has set as its aim the unification of all mankind in one family. ”

“ Everything I saw in Russia, in the cities and near the front, convinced me that what is going on there vitally concerns us. Every man, woman and child in the United States must get to work to give the help so sorely needed by the allies. Whatever has failed in Russia, whatever has broken down must never be missed. ”

“ As the world stands to-day, no nation offers opportunity in the degree that America does to the foreign-born Russia may, in the future, as I like to believe she will, prove a second United States of America in this respect. ”

“ It is well to keep these things in mind when men speak of Russia, as if overnight it could formulate a concerted policy and engage in a purpose backed by preponderant control of the Russian people. Russia is not a nation, it is an immense, unwieldy empire, a giant of tremendous strength, with undreamt-of potentialities, capable of colossal deeds, but without authoritative, united control or direction ”

“ Russia is, in itself, a land of contradictions. The proverb, that extremes meet, might have originated there. The Russian empire is too large and diversified to be characterised by a single epithet. It includes a larger number of distinct races blended together than any other country in the world: it is the home of almost unnumbered tribes, bound together by the tie of a common government, but separated from each other in every other respect. There you may see, in one nation, all the grades of civilisation, from the most primitive barbarism to the highest refinement. ”

“ The economic life of Russia has, at this moment, a peculiar interest for the United States. Everything that characterizes this side of Russia's life should, it would seem, be carefully studied by Americans, and understood as clearly as possible. There is a promise of advantage and prosperity for both sides in the friendship which is now being rapidly brought about between the great Empire and the great Republic. But such friendship will scarcely be consummated unless Russia and the United States come really to know and understand each other. ”

“ If some of us are right in thinking of the Russians as a great race with a vast country of tremendous resources; who can in any way picture the great and wonderful possibilities of their future? It will be my task to try and show how little opportunity they have had as yet of getting their share of modern civilization, how imperfectly, as yet, the ethical side of their religion has been imparted to them ”

“ We cannot possibly attach too much importance to the fact, admitted on all sides and in the most unexpected quarters, that this great race, [Pg 114] coming so very closely into our lives, uniting their destiny in some measure with our own, is above all others a distinctly religious people. Russia, as must be ever becoming more and more evident, is to be our ally in a way hitherto entirely unknown to our race and nation. ”

“ In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave and her conviction that the ideals presented by the picture are the noblest known to mankind. ”

“ For the Russian loves the soil with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind. His folk-songs are full of affectionate descriptions of it. His plough and his harrow are to him more than mere wood and iron. He loves to think of them as living things, as personal friends. Barbaric instincts have been aroused by the Revolution, and this simple but exalted mentality will remain in abeyance as long as those continue to rule who despise the peasant’s primitive aspirations and whose world-revolutionary aims are incomprehensible to him. ”